Notes from the Future: Joan Walsh

For the full Joan Walsh experience, you might want to check out this You Tube clip before reading on. It was included in the introduction of the keynote speaker (“One of the more surreal experiences I’ve had,” quipped Walsh.)

Walsh is editor in chief of Salon.com and spoke as an emissary from the (possible) “great future of journalism.” Her talk hit on a theme that ran throughout this year’s conference—the future of education reporting.

Over the past 15 years, online-only Salon has tried lots of things, some of which have worked and some of which haven’t, says Walsh. Her message: trial and error is your future. There’s no one thing, one business model, one Web idea that will take care of us, says Walsh. “Nothing will work, but everything might work.”

Walsh pointed out the irony many education reporters find themselves in these days— we work at organizations wracked by budget cuts and massive reorganizations, and we’re covering school systems wracked by budget cuts and massive reorganizations. “We are struggling to hold onto two institutions that make democracy work,” she said.

Hand-wringing. Still, Walsh doesn’t want to be one of the hand-wringers bemoaning the decline of journalism. The Golden Age of Journalism wasn’t that golden, she points out. It was never as if ad revenues streamed directly into investigative units at newspapers, after all. But in the future, reporters may have to piece together work as freelancers, book authors, teachers, and consultants. It was the Journalism-Isn’t-Dying-It’s-The-Business-Model-That’s-Dying argument.

Some Walsh advice for the future:

• trust your audience and let them have a voice on your site
• non profits aren’t going to save journalism, but build partnerships
• use academia in creative ways, including as cheap reporters
• social media is a must (“Is anyone tweeting this?”)
• get people to voluntarily pay for your content (the NPR totebag saves us after all!)

We used to know what’s good for you. EWAers brought up good questions about whether Web hits and search engine optimizations are influencing what journalists write. Walsh admits working in the online environment has shaped her publication as it seeks to maximize hits. “Salon has always had sexy, silly headlines,” Walsh offered in one example. “We don’t have as many anymore. Because you really need Sarah Palin in the headline.”

Since it began, Salon’s stories have gotten shorter and newsier. Walsh, a self-avowed Twitterholic, says there are no more 11,000-word stories, and gone is the original vision of an online literary magazine. The site covered the passage of health care reform in part with a “text slide show” that made it “all over Google.” Walsh says the old newspaper mindset of “We know what is good for you” has to end. She insisted Salon is giving the public a lot of what it wants, but also inserting content “they didn’t know they want to know” (example: Salon’s investigative series on Arlington National Cemetery).

And the winner is…. Walsh’s talk came just before the presentation of the National Awards for Education Reporting. “I believe awards really matter,” said Walsh. She won a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism years ago, at a time when she was thinking about giving up the profession. “It really kept me going at a time when freelancing was just …kicking my butt. That award carried me for years—not the money, but the honor.”

While new media was the topic of Walsh’s talk, the judges looking for this year’s best education stories liked what old media turned out. Finalists came from the Washington Post, USA Today, The Oregonian, and The Washingtonian. And speaking of news organizations wracked by cuts…the grand prize winner is from the Boston Globe. Bob Hohler wrote his series even as the Globe was undergoing massive layoffs and a near-death experience. Despite that, Hohler got an assignment any journalist could envy, whether they’re in new media or old: nine months to report his prize-winning stories, on the state of athletics in the Boston Public Schools.